Last month we saw an unlocked version of Samsung's Galaxy SII at Mobile Daily Steals for a cool $100 off its original price. If you were hoping to get an ever so slightly deeper discount on Samsung's hottest smartphone to date (still waiting on the Galaxy Nexus), your chance has arrived. For the next 24 hours, a "limited quantity" of SIIs are available on eBay for just $489.99.

If somehow you've forgotten, or haven't been paying attention, here are some of the SII's specs:

Android 2.3 Gingerbread

4.3" WVGA Super AMOLED Plus Display

8MP rear shooter and 2MP front shooter

1GB RAM

1.2GHz Dual-Core ARM Cortex A9 Processor

Expandable Storage via MicroSD, up to 32GB

The unlocked SII will work on a wide array of networks, making it ideal for an off-contract purchase, or phone to take on trips.

So, do you want to see how the Galaxy S II compares to the iPhone 4S when dropped directly onto concrete? Yeah, we thought you might -- and you you may actually be surprised at the results. Before you watch the video, though, I must warn you: watching these electronics plummet to their (presumed) demise can be a bit cringe inducing, even to not-so-squeamish among us. With that caveat out of the way, have a look at the video:

Finally it's T-Mobile's turn to take a swing at the Samsung Galaxy S II, almost six months after the rest of the world. No adjective soup for this variant; its official name is, plainly, the "T-Mobile Galaxy S II." Formerly known as the "Hercules," this is the misfit in the GSII family. In its heart pumps a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, instead of the normal Samsung Exynos. So it's not just a carbon copy of all those other GSIIs.

The folks over at the always impartial, numerically obsessed hardware review and benchmarking site Anandtech have gotten their hands on some results comparing the iPhone 4S to a slew of Android devices in browser and GPU performance. The results are, well, interesting. Take a look at these graphics comparing browser JavaScript performance:

The closest competitor to Apple's iPhone 4S? The testers decided to make the Galaxy Tab 8.9 the Android Honeycomb representative, and even with its aging Tegra 2 chipset the Tab pretty much matched Apple's iPhone 4S inch for inch.

The FedEx man brought me a lovely little gift yesterday: The T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II. This is the last stateside arrivalof the Galaxy S II family. The review will take a bit to get out the door, so until then I figured I'd whet your appetite with some initial impressions.

First of all, this thing is big. Really big. I have to say though, I love the design of it.

Update: After receiving a distraught email from Team ACS, it has been brought to our attention that their root method may not be the cause of signal loss on the Epic 4G Touch. We're currently researching the details and will update this post accordingly.

Looks like the just-released Samsung Epic 4G Touch is dealing with a few new-device hiccups. Both issues are relatively minor, but are noticeable (and annoying) nonetheless.

For starters, the calendar app may (or may not) force close when multiple events are dismissed at the same time. Secondly, if you're using 4G hotspot and take a phone call, it will kill the 4G connection. Of course, you can easily just re-enable the service at the end of the phone conversation, so it's only a minor inconvenience.

While Samsung may have promptly released the kernel source code for Sprint's Epic 4G Touch on release day, it has gone one step further with AT&T's variant and already uploaded the code to its Open Source Release Center. AT&T just announced the launch date of October 2nd this morning, so this makes the code available nearly two weeks before the phone.